Hello hello all you patrons, and welcome back to the blessedly final chunk of A Special Task.

“Previously we were introduced to the illustrious Commander Shepard, who in this reality is male and grown in a tank and lacks essentially any other defining qualities. He went on to participate in something vaguely resembling a ground engagement to secure Reaper-infested Sur’kesh, which involved a great deal of melodrama and self-doubt as well as well as heavy casualties and an apparently real Blasto-The-First-Hanar-Spectre. Dalatrass Linron (Or was it Verlin? Or Leroen? I don’t suppose it matters; they’re all essentially the same person anyway) subsequently escaped on a spaceflight-capable mech that may or may not have been a Reaper as the human forces closed in on the capitol, and various forces conjectured that she was heading for Tuchanka in order to convert the krogan population there into husks.”

Just Write A Star Trek Crossover Already Counter: Still 6. Why exactly did we do this again?

Hello hello all you patrons, and welcome to yet another ‘special’ three-chapter arc of A Special Task.

Last time… actually quite a lot happened, but not very much of it made sense. We got a massive, stupid infodump on a series of stupid research projects meant to fight the Reapers stupidly, including even-more-indestructible armor (sorry, amour) and shields for human ships, even-more-powerful antimatter cannons, supersoldier programs, and some sort of star-exploding thing. Then they made contact with the quarians and immediately brokered a peace with the geth, returning the Migrant Fleet to the pristine surface of Rannoch in, like, three days and securing both the quarians and the geth for the humans’ anti-Council harem alliance. Then… somehow… that one former salarian Councilor (they go through them at a pretty good clip and I cannot honestly keep track) managed to use a Reaper artifact and ‘nanites’ to indoctrinate the entire population of Sur’kesh and most of the salarian colonies! As far as we know, the only people to get out alive and fully functional were Mordin Solus and Captain Kirrahe, probably because they have memes in store and the author cannot let them leave the story until every one has been recited.

Hello hello all you patrons, and welcome back to another ‘special’ chapter of A Special Task.

Previously, we had our hopes that this ‘fic might actually go in a direction that wasn’t good but was at least different when the whole Bataliban Revolution arc was unceremoniously dropped in favor of the defrosting of Javik on Eden Prime and his subsequent regurgitation of stale memes and rich, chunky Reaper exposition.

“Long story short, both the turians and the asari began making military preparations for the Reapers’ arrival (for all the good it will do us), while the salarians and hanar both seceded from the Council– the hanar to join the humans, and the salarians to… actually, I’m not really sure what the salarians’ plan was other than to hurt themselves economically and politically.”

Just Write A Star Trek Crossover Already Counter: 6

The next chapter promises quarians, which are always a good thing to include in an HFY fic, but before that we’re going to have to put up with another visit from our old, dear friend MISTER POINTLESS CODEX ENTRY:

Hello hello all you patrons! Last time on A Special Task we were treated to the beginning, middle, and end of the Bataliban Batarian Rebellion all tied up in a nice Gary Stumanity bow. First, the humans encountered a Bataliban ‘separatist’ frigate- how did ‘separatists’ get a frigate to begin with??- and granted it asylum without bothering to figure out what it wanted or what was even going on (and also blew the everloving tar out of the massive Hegemony pursuit fleet that had somehow managed to not destroy it for an unspecified amount of combat beforehand. After that the humans immediately started smuggling (drastically underpowered compared to their own shit) weaponry to Kar’shan, which struck me as a bit weird given that the ‘separatists’ were revealed to possess entire space stations completely under their control.

Despite apparently having an enormous manpower and materiel advantage over the Hegemony their coordinated assault was well on its way to failing due to their troops inability to do anything other than charge directly into danger and get themselves shot, but fortunately the humans then showed up to bail them out. This process was repeated to ‘pacify’ all of the batarian colonies, out to the last Hegemony holdouts on Arathot (where two thirds of the population was killed!) at which point the humans found Object Rho and the Batarian Republic (whose actual policies are still uncertain but who was apparently thinking of continuing to hold all of the Council citizens the Hegemony had abducted as slaves until Tevos talked them out of it) decided to join the Grand Interstellar Alliance Of Fuck-The-Salarians-And-Their-Little-Dog-Too.

Hello hello all you patrons! Welcome back to the dense, flabby interior of A Special Task, the ‘fic that goes nowhere and does nothing, and does it extremely slowly.

“Previously, the human-Council negotiations ended with not a great deal actually being accomplished other than communications between the two powers being normalized and the salarian Councilor being upbraided over the Uplift fiasco. Then the humans built an absurdly large space station at Relay 314 to manage trade with the Council species, and then they and the turian forces assigned to guard the site- which included such revered figures as Septimus Oraka, Adrian Victus, Garrus Vakarian, and Nyreen Kandros all jumbled up together with no sense of why they would all be in the same time and same place- wandered around the station on leave, lost at some boring human video games, and… well, that was it.”

Just Write A Star Trek Crossover Already Counter: 5

Chapter 7- Civil Strife

March 21st, 2159, Unknown System

The Batarian frigate jumped out of FTL, engines already going at full tilt as soon as it decelerated. The crew inside tense and afraid.

“Kranak, please tell me we lost them.” The captain said to his pilot.

“I think so, but we can never be sure until its too late. There were several hegemony ships after us when we jumped, and one of them may have gotten a lock.” The pilot, Kranak, replied.

Oh, hey! Looks like we’re going to do that ‘batarian separatists’ thing he talked about in the author’s notes. It was the only storyline mentioned that actually sounded vaguely interesting… which, considering how much nothing has been crammed into the last few installments, is alarmingly encouraging.

Hello hello all you patrons! Rijus and I are back once again with another very, errrm, special series of chapters from A Special Task.

Last time formal contact with the Council races finally happened after 120 years of playing peek-a-boo with the salarians, when a group of annoying volus showed up on an exploration mission and then promptly returned to the Citadel without much more than a how-do-you-do. This led to a proper diplomatic team being sent out by the Vol Protectorate to initiate negotiations… which Ambassador Rozhenko did by getting all of the volus ambassadors drunk on vodka, making them agree to an unfavorable (and rather vague) deal, and then when they all woke up the next morning using that fact to blackmail them. Really upstanding guys here.

We left off just as a more formal human delegation consisting of Rozhenko, Donnell Udina, LiaTheir Token AI Friend Geromy, and some undescribed person in a military uniform who may or may not be the bit character Admiral Hannah Singh and may or may not exist from scene to scene was just setting up to try the same stupid vodka trick again (complete with glasses rigged to trick observers into thinking they themselves are drinking the same amount as the aliens when in fact it’s much less) in a full session with the Citadel Council.

Hello hello all you patrons, and welcome back to A Special Task, everyone’s favorite Codex-that-aspires-to-become-an-HFY-’fic.

“Previously, we watched the humans basically ignore the attempts by the salarians to uplift them and instead just find prothean ruins at their Mars colony as originally happened. Then the UEA- which is a different entity from the Systems Alliance for no real reason that I can think of- refused to engage with the Salarian teams sent to see what was happening, built some enormous warships to fight nobody, experimented with AI, and blew up a Blood Pack troopship.”

Note that all of this happened in the prologue, which by the way is four chapters long and approximately 50% codex entries and timelines. That, in turn, brings us to the story’s first ‘proper’ chapter, ‘Second Contact’:Read the rest of this entry »